1. Field of the Invention
Embodiments of the present invention generally relate to data protection and recovery systems and, more particularly, to a method and apparatus for providing a catalog to optimize stream-based data restoration from backup media (e.g., magnetic tape, disk and/or the like).
2. Description of the Related Art
In a typical computing environment, an organization may employ a number of technologies to process, store, recover, protect, produce and secure mission critical data. For example, the typical computing environment may include one or more database management systems for organizing and retrieving structured data records (e.g., tables) from one or more databases. As another example, the organization may employ one or more data protection and recovery systems to backup and restore the mission critical data after a disaster or data corruption. Furthermore, the typical computing environment may include one or more data storage systems for facilitating permanent storage, retrieval and transmission of the mission critical data throughout a computer network.
In addition, one or more components integrate various functionalities of disparate systems. For example, the database management system (e.g., ORACLE database) cooperates with the data protection and recovery system (e.g., SYMANTEC BackupExec) to backup a particular database to a storage device (e.g., magnetic tape) and restore data to the particular database at a later point in time (e.g., upon a failure). In such an example, a component of the database management system (e.g., ORACLE Recovery Manager (RMAN)) interacts with a corresponding component of the data protection and recovery system (e.g., ORACLE Agent for SYMANTEC NetBackup and/or BackupExec).
The recovery manager of the database management system performs various backup and restore commands for the data protection and recovery system. For example, the database management system creates one or more backup sets (e.g., a backup image stream) from the particular database and communicates the one or more backup sets to the data protection system for storage (e.g., on magnetic tape). As another example, the data protection system creates one or more raw data streams from the one or more backup sets, which are fed to the database management system. Subsequently, the database management system uses the one or more raw data streams to recover a storage state of the particular database.
Because the recovery manager resides on a production host (server) within the computing environment, the backup and restore commands affect performance of various computer resources associated with the production host (i.e., services, applications, storage and/or the like). For example, the recovery manager creates a raw data stream for each backup set. In other words, if one full backup and N incremental backups were completed for a database, then N+1 raw data streams are created during granular object (e.g., file) restoration or full database restore. Consequently, N+1 raw data streams require a significant amount of computer resources (e.g., memory and processor resources) in order to recover a storage state of the database.
Therefore, there is a need in the art for a method and apparatus for providing a catalog to optimize stream-based granular object restoration off of the production host.